Thursday, December 11, 2008

More On Emotional Mapping

Thanks to Ana Andjelic and Paul der Van for writing up about ifeelnyc.com. This website allows you to see where people go and what they do when they are in various moods, in London, New York and Toronto. It seems like this brings us to the bi-directional causality problem. That is, do people go to certain places because of their mood? Or do places affect mood? Or a bit of both?

4 comments:

Michael99 said...

Work on park use suggests that the answer is both. People use these places for mood regulation purposes and this can is associated with better psychosomatic health symptoms(e.g. less digestive symptoms, headache etc). But of course it's hard to know as maybe they spend the time in parks chewing on a sandwich rather than in burger king which could produce better mood and less digestive symptoms and less headaches with no glucose crash. That's why we need to do a prospective study with drm and food diarys after randomly relocating people to live in similar city locations with or without parks (chapelizod & tallaght!?).

Anonymous said...

Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as... (parklife!)

Whos that gut lord marching? you should cut down on your porklife, mate, get some exercise! (parklife!)

I feed the pigeons, I sometimes feed the sparrows too.
It gives me a sense of enormous well-being. (parklife!)


Well you teed me up on that one there Michael...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKCoBt43HWE

Kevin Denny said...

Many's the time I regulated my mood in a park in Chapelizod. They have parks in Tallaght too 'though.

Andy Whitlock said...

Thanks for the post. Glad you like the idea!

Creating the chilled map brought up this issue in my head. Most of the maps are based on indulging the mood you're in. I.e. I feel hungover (and want a dark place with greasy food).

But the chilled map might be more relevant as an escape from a different mind-state. I.e. I feel stressed (and want to feel chilled).
I thought this was negative though. Who would click on a stressed map? Sounds awful!

Broadly I think it's a good idea to let people interpret the moods they will and let the thing evolve naturally.

Incidentally, apparently it's been proven that smiling can actually increase the production of chemicals in your body that make you feel happy. Food for thought :)

P.s. Got a new version of this site coming soon, so if you live in a city other than London, NYC or Toronto, then this new one's for you ;)

Andy